ABSTRACT
This workbook has been all about how to deal with problems in a systematic way. It advises you:
to hold back and think; to step back and analyse; to look back and learn.
This obviously isn’t necessary for all problems, because sometimes a solution isn’t needed, and at other times it’s obvious what it must be. But the need for systematic problem-solving is undoubtedly real. As Perrin Stryker puts it in his introduction to Kepner and Tregoe’s original version of The New Rational Manager :
. . . the cost of unsystematic and irrational thinking by managers is undeniably enormous. If he wants to, any good manager can easily recall from experience a wide assortment of bungled problems and erroneous decisions. As an executive of a large corporation long honoured for its good management once said to me, ‘The number of undisclosed $10,000 mistakes made in this company every day makes me shudder.’
